When my family started Telect in 1982, prior to the 1984 divestiture of AT&T, we had no idea of the exciting adventure we were about to embark upon. We have been fortunate to have helped usher in the Broadband and Information Age from Eastern Washington by supporting the buildout of cable and fiber optic networks when those technologies were just emerging. And today, we’ve grown into a subsidiary of one of the world’s largest interconnect manufacturers, Amphenol.

Only in America.

I’ve been troubled in recent years because it seems the more our industry advances, the more difficult it becomes to navigate through government regulations.

In the early years of the internet during the 1990s and through the 2000s, innovation moved quickly because entrepreneurs were able to do whatever they thought was possible online without asking for permission from the government. Investment dollars poured in because there was almost nothing in the way to stop the growth and the profits. Our little company kept growing and hiring more and more employees thanks to all of that unfettered activity.

But the innovation game changed in 2015. For the very first time, the Federal Communications Commission imposed heavy regulations on the internet, not by passing a law in Congress, but by classifying it as a “public utility” to be regulated under Title II of the Communications Act of 1934, which is a law originally intended to oversee primitive land-line telephone systems, not sophisticated computer networks.

Ostensibly they did so because they wanted to protect net neutrality, which is a pretty simple idea: Users should be able to go wherever they want on the internet without being blocked or slowed by internet service providers trying to favor certain content over others. Although that had almost never been a problem before, some expressed legitimate concern that it was possible if internet service providers saw an opportunity to sell different levels of access at premium prices.

But the problem was never really net neutrality; it was how it was implemented. The internet is most certainly not a utility like our electric or water services. A public utility has to be tightly regulated because they are essentially monopolies or quasi-monopolies that rely on common infrastructure. The internet isn’t like that; in most places, there are several companies you can choose to get your internet service from, and they have their own wires.

Utility-style regulations likely played a role in driving down broadband investment by as much as 21 percent, meaning we are needlessly losing billions of dollars of potential investments in our economy.

Using Title II is the wrong approach; net neutrality deserves its own law. At this point, balanced legislation establishing consumer protections as well as clearly defining the precise role of the government would likely have significant bipartisan support.

In fact, U.S. Rep. Cathy McMorris Rodgers has always been a supporter of an open, secure internet and has also been an advocate for the free market principles that drive investment to help expand internet access, and she knows America’s regulatory policies should reflect that. I applaud her for her stance on reversing Title II.

The basic framework of net neutrality is not at all controversial; the only controversy is the use of old utility standards to impose it. If we are to truly capitalize on the opportunity to bring robust broadband access to Eastern Washington and other underserved areas, we need to rollback Title II as soon as possible and replace it with balanced legislation.

It’s my hope that leaders in Congress – on both sides of the aisle – will work together to find a long-term solution.